Various systems have been described and designed for capture and interactive navigation of panoramic digital imagery. For example, see “FlyCam: Practical Panoramic Video,” Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo, vol. III, pp. 1419–1422 (August 2000); U.S. Pat. No. 6,285,365, “Icon-Referenced Panoramic Image Display,” Nalwa; and U.S. Pat. No. 6,121,966, “Navigable Viewing System,” Teodosio et al.
Separately, systems also exist for annotating and sharing traditional video “clips” or excerpts. See, e.g., “VideoNoter: A Tool for Exploratory Video Analysis,” Roschelle, Pea, & Trigg, Institute for Research on Learning, Technical Report No. 17 (1990).
However, little attention has so far been paid to the larger need—and opportunity—of co-located or distributed user communities to author and share personal interpretations of multimedia content by creating, annotating, storing, and sharing persistent records of “point-of-view” visual media traversals. Such records should faithfully capture the author's unique perspective in viewing particular media content—e.g., recording the spatial focus and timing of the author's viewing experience—as well as provide a vehicle for the author to express his or her interpretation of that media content through comments, categorizations, and other symbolic forms of annotations. An effective solution addressing this need should provide well-integrated, interactive facilities enabling powerful expression but yet suitable for authors who are not technology specialists. In addition, the solution should enable authors to share their interpretations with a networked user community, and likewise enable community participants to voice their own comments and views in response to specific media content. Furthermore, the desired solution should support analytical tools enabling users to explore and quantify the significance of media content and commentary being shared.